E-Retailers Must Offer Personalised Services to Win Customer Trust

By 2025, Singapore's e-commerce market is expected to make up 6.7 per cent of all retail sales, at a value of US$87.8 billion.

How do you create this trust? Via value-added services: when consumers see that their interests are being considered, they do not feel constrained or trapped by a commercial logic that is beyond them.

Amazon, with its "1-Click" ordering, has shown the way. In other sectors, such as the taxi industry, newcomers have gone even further, revolutionising the customer's journey by utilising digital technology, from searching for a service to payment through a range of innovative services that make the customer's life easier, such as the automated capture of expense forms.

In a world in which advertising and tracking are increasingly present, data analysis carried out with the sole aim of commercial transformation is doomed to failure, as it is based on an imbalance between the benefits offered to the customer and those gained by the supplier. Until now, personalisation in retail has tended to limit itself to marketing and measure itself in conversion rates, except for distributors, who have increasingly relied on customer loyalty.

Multichannel is not the invention of the distributors but a reaction to consumers' wishes. Think about it, even Amazon is going to start opening physical stores. Why? Because it has fully understood that a key element was missing in its bid to become better acquainted with its customers' journey, while responding more effectively to their wishes.